Introducing the Michigan Death Records Collection

Welcome to Seeking Michigan! As a partner in the site, The Library of Michigan is excited to make these Michigan death certificates for the years 1897 to 1920 freely available online. The years 1915 to 1920 are particularly significant, as a readily available statewide index did not exist previously.

There are terrific ancestral discoveries just waiting to be made in this statewide collection. Take Guy Robinson, for example. His death certificate is exceptionally detailed, even more so than usual. Guy died 17 May 1914 in Delta Township, Eaton County. In addition to both his parents’ names (his mother’s maiden name, too), the certificate identifies his mother’s specific county of birth – Dodge County, Wisc. Guy’s father’s birthplace is even more specific – Woodland Township, Barry County, Mich., as is his own – Oneida Township, Eaton County, Mich. Guy’s burial was at Union Cemetery in Eaton County, perhaps at a family plot there. The certificate’s informant was Guy’s father, Loell Robinson, giving a certain validity to the information. If this were your “Guy,” you’d be ecstatic.

Currently, there are about 250,000 of the approximately 1,000,000 certificates on this site, or about 25 percent of the total collection. We’ll be adding additional records regularly in the next few weeks, so check back often.

So what years and counties are here? The list below details what records are currently available; [incomplete] means that particular county (or Detroit) is not yet fully loaded, not that the whole run of counties listed is incomplete. Remember that the Library of Michigan will be regularly adding records in the coming weeks.

1901:

Lenawee – Midland [incomplete]

Detroit [incomplete]

1902:

Alcona – St. Clair

1904:

Detroit [incomplete]

1905:

St. Joseph – Wexford

Detroit [incomplete]

1911

Gratiot – Ionia [incomplete]

1912:

Menominee – Washtenaw [incomplete]

Detroit [incomplete]

1913:

Alcona – Crawford

Midland – Wexford

1914:

Alcona – WexfordDetroit [incomplete]

1915:

Alcona – Wexford

1916:

Berrien [incomplete]

Delta – Gratiot [incomplete]

Lapeer [incomplete] – Detroit [incomplete]

1917:

Genesee [incomplete] – Wexford

1918:

Alcona – Berrien [incomplete]

Kalamazoo [incomplete] – Wexford

Detroit [incomplete]

We hope you enjoy Seeking Michigan and wish you happy searching. I hope you find your “Guy!”

233 Responses to Million Record March

This is so wonderful! The majority of my ancestors settled in Michigan so this is a major help. Is there any plans for death certificates in the 1920-1940 timeframe being added? I have lost track of some of my family which have apparently moved around during and after the Depression.

Great addition to the Genealogy literature. And free! I can hardly believe it.
Although Monroe County is not listed on the list of counties already online, I found some death certificates from there.
Will you be updating the list of covered counties as you add more records?

There are a number of years available for Monroe County already online – 1902, 1912-1913, and 1915-1918, I believe.

The list above of counties currently loaded is arranged by year and then alphabetically by Michigan county. If your county isn’t listed, it doesn’t mean that there are no records for that county.

Take 1913 for example. Records for Alcona through Crawford County are all there, including Bay, Berrien, Calhoun, etc. Then there is a record gap; missing counties include Kalamazoo, Kent, and Marquette. The collection starts up again with Midland County, and is complete the rest of 1913, including Wayne County and Detroit.

The next batch of records to appear will fill in some of these holes. Hang in there…..

I have been waiting a long, long time for this information to be uploaded in hopes of finding my husband’s grandmother who died from the Spanish flu in 1918. Mt. Olivet can not account for her grave although we believe she is there and hope that her death certificate will provide us with information that can help ud locate her grave so if you folks find a Candida Fiori on your index cards, please upload her so her family can finally visit her grave. Thanks so much for completing this super big project.

I want to thank all the people that made this project possible.
I understand that you haven’t loaded all the death records yet.
I have noticed that there are several years missing in the list above, does that mean that you don’t have records for those years? I can understand that some counties being missing, but a whole year’s worth of death records missing?

I can’t wait until 1920 is added. I found a person buried in a plot in Holy Cross Cemetery in Detroit of my relatives who died in January of 1920. Her last name is different than my great grandfather, but through census records I did find out that my great great grandmother did come over in 1907 but died before the 1920 census was taken.

I am hoping to find out if this is my great great grandmother and they only buried her under her maiden name.

This site is awesome I can’t wait till the Shiawassee, Saginaw, and Clinton counties are completely up. This service is a great thing. Any possibility of putting up a list of what counties and years will be up and when? Thanks for putting this service online.

I’ve been checking this site for an 1899 death record from Kent County. That year hasn’t been posted yet, but I am noticing many records from 1928 & 1929. What time frame will these death certificates actually span?

Will there be some way to know when new records have been added? For example, will the list of records above be extended or revised with the new additions highlighted? This is a wonderful resource. Many thanks to all those involved.

I just found you all today and it’s exciting to know that they aren’t all on yet. As the 2 I really want aren’t here yet. Menke is the name and I know where they are buried and thanks to findagrave.com someone went out and got their Stone pictures for me. Everything else on them as been hard going. Even census records for them have been a dead end. Beginning to think they are running from something! lol So hopefully I will find them here before to long.

For those of you interested in Oakland County Michigan, I found the Farmington Observer in digital going back to 1888. You can even pick up names through the “gossip” sections and Obits. It’s even fun just reading page after page to see all the ads and headlines.
Here is the link..get ready for another addiction!

Thank you so much for making these records available. I found my grandfather’s death certificate from Grand Rapids! Now, if his grandfather’s would just pop up, I’d be estatic! I don’t even know where, nor when HE died, and with a surname of Webster, it’s difficult to sort out!
Keep up the good work.

We anticipate the project to be finished in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. The list of what years and counties will be updated as new records are added. Records are added as we process them, so they’ve not necessarily been in order.

Statewide registration of Michigan births, marriages, and deaths began with Public Act 194 of 1867. There was not immediate full compliance to the law, but by the time period we’re using here (1897-1920), there likely was.

I am very familiar with the name WEINE which is relatively unique in my research. If you magnify the record, you will see there are actually four pen strokes in that “W”. The correct name appears to be:

Dora Kleine DEITZ

Also, I am particularly interested in finding information about this burial in Detroit: CHABENSKY, Shlomo 27 May 1917. If you have any way to check or put that record in the next batch I would be grateful. 🙂

Thank You! As a budget genealogy researcher with only a subscription to Ancestry, and not the money to shell out for death certificates for every relative, this is a wonderful resource to finally have online. I have never understood why public records should be so expensive to order for persons who died a long time ago. I don’t need the hard copies for any other purpose, so these death records add so much to my understanding of my family.

I am so grateful to have this site pointed out to me. For years I searched for my Dad’s sister, Mary, knowing only that she died young, possibly of tuberculosis. I had her date of birth, dates for two marriages, and she appeared on the 1910 census, then nothing. Lo and behold, she appeared on this new site, with soooo much information. The useful info was of course, about the disease. She was only 24 and died at University Hospital in Ann Arbor in 1913. For some reason, that never showed up anywhere in all the years I searched. Now if I can find her burial place I will be happy (the death certificate only states the village name. How wonderful your work is.

Now, if I could find a newspaper article on an 1864 death I would be ecstatic (genealogically speaking, that is!)

I live in Oregon so having these records available on line is great! I am a little disappointed, though, as the county I am interested in researching (Houghton) is not yet available. As Tom Petty wrote, “. . . the waiting is the hardest part. . .”

Unfortunately, no, we can’t search by mother’s maiden name. We had to make some tough decisions, and that certainly was one of them.

That being said, I think researchers have lots of searching choices. Name, death date, county, city/village/twp., father’s first and last names – users have a lot of different ways to find their record of interest.

Thanks for your comments, and be sure to check back later, we’ll be adding tons of records today.

I’m happy you’ve had some success with the Seeking Michigan web site. We’ll be adding lots of records later today, so be sure to check back.

To identify your elusive cemetery, you can also use the Michigan Cemetery Sources database, available at: http://michigan.gov/cemeteries. You can limit your search to a particular township in a county, and it will show the known cemeteries and their locations.

Equally important, the Cemetery Sources database will also show the cemetery resources available here at the Library of Michigan that have information specific to that cemetery. And it’s free!

Actually, there are a number of years already available for Houghton County – 1902, 1911, 1914-1915, and 1917, I believe. Plus, we’ll be adding lots of records shortly.

The list above of counties currently loaded is arranged by year and then alphabetically by Michigan county. If your county isn’t listed, it doesn’t mean that there are no records for that county.

Take 1913 for example. Records for Alcona through Crawford County are all there, including Bay, Berrien, Calhoun, etc. Then there is a record gap; missing counties include Kalamazoo, Kent, and Marquette. The collection starts up again with Midland County, and is complete the rest of 1913, including Wayne County and Detroit.

The next batch of records to appear will fill in some of these holes. We’re as anxious as everyone else is to get this project completed, thanks for your patience.

I recognize everyone is anxious for the next batch of records to load. There will be a new article here shortly at the Look page of Seeking Michigan outlining what years and counties will be available.

This next batch is approximately 400,000 records, certainly a lot of data. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we move forward on this enormous project.

I can not express gratitude enough to FINALLY find real info where I don’t have to pay for it.Very weary of having other sites with subscriptions for dollars in order to find my ancestors!! What A terrific undertaking.I’ll try to be patient.Any chance of doing the upper peninsula as well? Thank you for coming up with a wonderful project.

I have several family lines in Michigan going back to the mid 1850’s until now.

I found a death certificate for my grandfather’s brother who died in an orphanage and we didn’t know where he was. His mother wouldn’t tell him anything. Well we found little Everett Holmes. My mother was very happy to know that we have now found where he went.

I will continue to watch your site as I have a Stephen Wheeler that is yet to be found. I know where he was until 1898 in Grand Rapids and I found his widow in 1918 so somewhere in there he died but where? This family moved a lot.

Awesome site! I have been working with the Ogemaw County Clerk assisting researchers seeking death records in Ogemaw. Your site actually has some records that the county clerk doesn’t have—I assume some records may have been destroyed by fire or water on the county level…will add those few additional records to the Ogemaw County GenWeb site. Thanks for all your work!

Thank you for doing this. I finally found my great grandmother. I then was able to get her obit from 1909 which proved there was a 4th child which I wasn’t sure of. Her name starts with a “D” and it was entered with a “G” and the new name was totally misleading, only her first name caught my attention. Without the death certificate I don’t know if I ever would have found her. Thanks again.
Fran

I’m glad that you’ve had some success with the site. If you feel there has been a transcription error, please contact the Library at librarian@michigan.gov. We’ll be making scheduled updates/corrections to the index as we move forward.